Couple Spots Coyote Outside Pottery Barn Near North And Sheffield Avenues
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A couple in Lincoln Park got quite a scare this week while trying to put their baby in the car.
A coyote was spotted running around the Pottery Barn in the 1000 W. North Ave. shopping center, off North and Sheffield avenues in the Clybourn Corridor area.
The animal then darted into traffic and nearly got hit by a car.
Suzan Occhipinti, who took the video, wrote that the coyote ran right by her husband's leg as he was loading up the stroller.
Occhipinti wrote that she followed the coyote into the industrial area behind the nearby Binny's Beverage Depot at 1720 N. Marcey St., but the coyote escaped onto an industrial property.
It is not clear if this was the same coyote that was spotted in the past week a short distance to the south and east on the Near North Side.
On Sunday night alone, there were four other coyote incidents or sightings within just hours in the old Cabrini-Green area. Lynell Dillon said a coyote attacked her 7-year-old Schnauzer, Missy, as the dog did her business in a patch of grass in the 900 block of North Cambridge Avenue in the Cabrini Rowhouses.
"I said, 'Oh my God! That's a wolf!'" Dillon said. "And one of them corrected me and said, 'It's a coyote.'"
Dillon's grandson stepped in.
"He literally just took the chair and was threatening to attack the coyote," Dillon told CBS 2's Charlie De Mar.
Dillon's grandson succeeded in scaring the coyote away.
The other coyote sightings this past Sunday were all just blocks away from Dillon. On Elm Street near Cleveland Avenue, a man reported a coyote chased after him and his dog.
A video taken Friday also shows a limping coyote in the same Near North neighborhood, right outside a Whole Foods.
It is estimated by the Urban Coyote Research Project that between 1,500 and 2,000 coyotes call Cook County home. There is an abundance in Cook County of rodents – one of their favorite things to dine upon.
